A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
